The present invention relates, in general, to a system used for recovering oil from oil-contaminated water and, more particularly, to a system capable of separating oil from oil-contaminated water of a river, lake or sea into oil and water in accordance with a difference in specific weight between oil and water, the system being operated under the control of a controller so as to receive oil-contaminated water through an inlet and separate oil from the oil-contaminated water in a segregation tank prior to recovering oil, the segregation tank consisting of a plurality of segregation chambers, individually having an oil floating unit or a horizontal oil fence, thus continuously recovering oil from oil-contaminated water.
In the art, when it is necessary to remove oil from oil-contaminated water of a river, lake or sea, an oil-contaminated area is primarily surrounded by an oil fence so as to prevent a further dispersion of oil. After arranging the oil fence, oil may be removed from water using absorption fabric sheets. The oil may be also removed from water by spreading oil-decomposable or oil-fixing chemicals on the water.
However, the method of removing oil from oil-contaminated water using the absorption fabric sheets is problematic in that it is impossible to use the recovered oil. On the other hand, the method of removing oil from water by decomposing or fixing the oil using chemicals regrettably causes a secondary environmental pollution. Another problem experienced in the typical methods resides in that it is almost impossible to appropriately lay oil fences on a wavy sea. Even though oil fences are set on such a wavy sea, the oil fences fail to effectively segregate the oil-contaminated area from other areas.
Accordingly, the present invention has been made keeping in mind the above problems occurring in the prior art, and an object of the present invention is to provide an oil recovery system, which improves oil recovering efficiency, which recovers oil from oil-contaminated water without using any chemicals, thus being free from causing environmental pollution, and which allows recovered oil to be usable so that the system preferably conserves natural resources.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an oil recovery system, which stabilizes the flow of oil-contaminated water in a segregation tank, thus reducing the processing time for separating oil from water and thereby being continuously operated without being stopped during an oil recovering operation.
In order to accomplish the above objects, the primary embodiment of the present invention provides an oil recovery system, of which the oil-contaminated water inlet unit is designed to effectively float on water. The system thus effectively absorbs oil-contaminated water. The oil-contaminated water is, thereafter, forcibly introduced into a segregation tank by a pumping force of a first pump. The above segregation tank has an inlet port, an oil level sensing unit, a movable panel, a panel sensing unit, and first and second discharge pipes used for separately discharging oil and water from the tank, After an oil recovering process, oil is pumped by a second pump of the first discharge pipe so as to be discharged from the tank into an outside oil tank. The first and second discharge pipes are provided with first and second valves for controlling the flow of oil and water discharged from the tank. The controller receives position signals from the two sensing units prior to controlling the operation of the valves and pumps.
In another embodiment, the system has a four-stage segregation tank provided with first to fourth chambers. In the operation of the system, oil-contaminated water is primarily introduced into the first chamber by a pumping force of a piston pump. In such a case, four oil floating units are provided in the top portion of the first chamber of the tank, so that oil-contaminated water from the piston pump is introduced into the first chamber after passing through the oil floating units. After a primary recovering process, the oil-contaminated water from the first chamber orderly overflows into the second and third chambers so as to be secondarily and finally processed. The second and third chambers individually have a plurality of horizontal diaphragms at a top portion. After a final recovering process, oil free from water flows into the fourth chamber prior to being discharged from the segregation tank into an outside oil tank.